breathe, spirit and life 呼吸、靈魂與生命


Images by Rob Battersby.

The exhibition took the Bluecoat’s site history, originally a charity school for children in poverty built in 1716-17 with proceeds from the Transatlantic slave trade, as its starting point.

Referencing Keith Piper’s peer support curatorial strategy in the group exhibition, Trophies of Empire (Bluecoat,1992), breathe, spirit and life 呼吸、靈魂與生命 repurposed the gallery as a communal space for cleansing, detoxification and purification as a collective decolonial healing process. Together, the artists explored ideas in relation to Taoist practice of self-cultivation, meditation, rituals, and harmonisation with nature.

As part of the exhibition Dhissou presented a series of manjis, a punjabi woven structure which is essentially a 4 legged woven bed. A manji is not just a bed, but a place, a space, for reflection, for dining, for communal gatherings, for drying vegetables, spices or clothes, for sitting together, for rest, for meetings, and for lying under the stars. A manji is a space for community, for rest and for the commons, it belongs to the public and in various countries in the subcontinent is a symbol of civic space, familial and community culture.

Alongside the manjis was a collection of brooms collected from around the world, which borrow from their own local environments using materials native to their country of origin. The artist uses the brooms as a prompt to encourage us to learn more about one another and our homes, our differences, similarities and oppositions. Some brooms are handmade by the artist, some found and some gifted. Guest curator, Katherine Ka Yi Liu 廖加怡 gifted a broom from China via Hong Kong, as a form of collaboration with the artist.

Images by Rob Battersby.


Image by Tommy Wong.

The show also saw the introduction of an experimental performance as well as some photographic works of a performance that took place in the woods. Live Performance images were taken by Tommy Wong.